Thursday, June 10, 2010

Malcolm Tucker of e-learning – me?

I’ve been around in e-learning for a while, 27 years to be exact, and as I’ve expressed strong opinions as a CEO, blogger and speaker, I’m fair game. One aspect of the duck shoot I have enjoyed is being given monikers, once in a book by Julie Burchill, once during a Q&A session , once by a chair who introduced me at a conference, and this week on Twitter.

Burchill’s bitch calles me ‘Charlie’

Now I’m a fan of Julie Burchill, and as I live in Brighton, was delighted when she wrote a book called Made In Brighton. One chapter, on Brighton new media companies, was written by her hubby Daniel Raven, who worked for me for seven years. As I was reading it (he didn’t like new media or companies or e-learning) I wondered who the CEO called ‘Charlie’ was. Then it struck me - it was me! In a later blog exchange Daniel admitted that he had to change my name to ‘Charlie’ as the lawyers had stated it would be libellous. He clearly didn’t see the legal problem in admitting that ‘Charlie’ was Donald in the public domain of a blog. Then again, Daniel was never the brightest crayon in the box, and spent 7 years plodding away in the test department, saying little or nothing. And don’t think for one minute that silence means depth.

Jeremy Clarkson of e-learning

I was tagged with this after giving a keynote to a large teachers’ conference. Now I had laid into traditional classroom delivery, the waste in having an IT budget in every school, the lack of sharing and general failure of the system to deliver improved performance after a doubling of the education budget. It came as the first question (more of a comment really) from a bod from BECTA. But JEREMY CLACKSON! I don’t even drive. Never been behind the wheel of a car in my life! Laziness really, I just never got round to it.

Judy Dench of e-learning

Vaughan Waller, the chair at Learning Technologies last year introduced me as the Dame Judy Dench of e-learning. As a six foot four, balding Scotsman I was plain puzzled. I’m as far from a middle-class, English ‘luvie’ as you can get. To be fair, I suspect it was a reference to just staying the course. If it was age then comparison with a 75 year old is worrisome.

Malcolm Tucker

This week I’ve been called the Malcolm Tucker of e-learning on Twitter. This I like. For those of you who don’t know who Malcolm Tucker is, he’s a crazed, cursing Scotsman from the award winning political satire, ’In The Thick of It’ and the film, 'In The Loop'. It sort of captures the Scottish, swearing, ranting side of my character. My wife and teenage kids looked at each other and gave knowing smiles – it must be right.